Posts Tagged ‘science’

The importance of playing the long game in life, be it extraterrestrial or earthly.

Astronomer Jill Tarter grew up taking apart and reassembling her father’s radios. She is the Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI Research — California’s institute of Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — and the inspiration for Jodie Foster’s character in the iconic 1997 film Contact, adapted from Carl Sagan’s novel of the same title. The recipient of two public service medals from NASA and the TED Prize, among ample other accolades, Tarter has spent nearly forty years searching the cosmos for alien life and advocating for the importance of that inquiry.

In this short video from NOVA, Tarter recounts how Sagan and Ann Druyan contacted her about the novel and explores the broader question of why the search for extraterrestrial life matters — and matters enormously:

I don’t get out of bed every morning thinking, “Will I find extraterrestrial intelligence today?” But I do think every day, “How can I improve the search?” Fifty years of silence doesn’t mean SETI is a failure; it means we’re just getting started. We may not succeed tomorrow or next year or next decade or even next century, but a critical part of our job is passing on what we’ve learned to the future generations of cosmic scientists.

What a wonderful disposition toward life, extraterrestrial or earthly — to think how much more we could achieve and with what greater ease we could live if we only applied this to our everyday lives, from the search for love to the conquest of a project.

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“With every breath, we inhale a bit of the story of our universe, our planet’s past and future…”

It takes more than three centuries for a one-foot layer of dust to accumulate. The entirety of the Roman Empire is buried nine feet underground — that is, under nine feet of tightly compacted dust. This household nuisance is indeed one of nature’s most humbling phenomena and Earth’s most steadfast preserver. Picasso was fascinated by it. In a passage from Hungarian photographer Brassaï’s 1964 gem Conversations with Picasso (public library) — which also gave us the iconic artist on success and not compromising and intuition and where ideas come from — Picasso marvels the news of an excavation in which archeologists preserved a cross-section more than ten feet high, containing multiple layers built over the millennia. When Brassaï notes how moving it is that “in a glance, you can take in thousands of years of history,” Picasso responds enthusiastically:

And you know what’s responsible? It’s dust! The earth doesn’t have a housekeeper to do the dusting. And the dust that falls on it every day remains there. Everything that’s come down to us from the past has been conserved by dust. Right here, look at these piles, in a few weeks a thick layer of dust has formed. On rue La Boétie, in some of my rooms … my things were already beginning to disappear, buried in dust. You know what? I always forbade everyone to clean my studios, dust them, not only for fear they would disturb my things, but especially because I always counted on the protection of dust. It’s my ally. I always let it settle where it likes. It’s like a layer of protection. When there’s dust missing here or there, it’s because someone has touched my things. I see immediately someone has been there. And it’s because I live constantly with dust, in dust, that I prefer to wear gray suits, the only color on which it leaves no trace.

Portrait of Picasso, in one of his gray dust-proof suits, by Brassaï

So what is dust, really? And what makes it so special? Count on Joe Hanson to put some science behind the legendary artist’s muse:

We’re constantly moving dust from one place to another, only to have it replaced by more dust — entropy always wins.

[…]

A piece of space-dust falls on your head once every day… With every breath, we inhale a bit of the story of our universe, our planet’s past and future, the smells and stories of the world around us, even the seeds of life.

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In 1990, shortly before a CERN physicist subverted gender and science stereotypes by adapting Alice in Wonderland as an allegory in quantum mechanics, a different type of delightful subversion was afoot at the famed European Organization for Nuclear Research, now home to the Large Hadron Collider: Michele Muller, a former British model and actor working as a 3D graphic designer for a virtual reality project at CERN, was dating CERN computer scientist Silvano de Gennaro and found herself frustrated with her boyfriend’s seemingly unending shifts. Rather than fight over it, the two decided to have some fun with the relationship sticking point — Michele set her frustrations to song, asking Silvano to write some music that she would perform at the CERN Hardronic Festival. The song “Collider” was born — a humorous homage to the lonely nights and perpetual perils of a scientist’s lover that went a little something like, “I gave you a golden ring to show you my love / You went to stick it in a printed circuit / To fix a voltage leak in your collector / You plug my feelings into your detector.” The song was a hit, which led Muller to recruit a couple of her girlfriends and form Les Horribles Cernettes — a parody doo-wop band that dubbed itself “the one and only High Energy Rock Band” and sang love songs about colliders, quarks, liquid nitrogen, microwaves, and antimatter in ’60s-inspired outfits.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, founding father of the World Wide Web, was working at CERN at the time and had taken a liking to Les Horribles Cernettes’ irreverent odes to science. According to De Genarro, Berners-Lee asked him for a few scanned photos of the band to put on “some sort of information system he had just invented, called the ‘World Wide Web.'”

On July 18, 1992, this photograph of the band — comprised, at that point, of Michele Muller, Colette Marx-Nielsen, Angela Higney, and Lynn Veronneau — became the very first image uploaded to the web.

Oh, and they were actually very, very good. After a dogged dig through various corners of CERN’s web archives, which seem charmingly unchanged since the ’90s, I excavated a few of Les Horribles Cernettes’ songs — please enjoy:

COLLIDER

You say you love me but you never beep me
You always promise but you never date me
I try to fax but it’s busy, always
I try the network but you crash the gateways
You never spend your nights with me
You don’t go out with other girls either
You only love your collider

I fill your screen with hearts and roses
I fill your mail file with lovely phrases
They all come back: “invalid user”
You never let me into your computer
You never spend your nights with me
You don’t go out with other girls either
You prefer your collider

I gave you a golden ring to show you my love
You went to stick it in a printed circuit
To fix a voltage leak in your collector
You plug my feelings into your detector
You never spend your nights with me
You don’t go out with other girls either
You prefer your collider
You only love your collider
Your collider

STRONG INTERACTION

You quark me up
You quark me down
You quark me top
You quark me bottom

You quark me up (yeah yeah, I feel your charm)
You quark me down (tau tau, I feel so strange)
You quark me top (go go on hypercharge)
You quark me bottom (shoot shoot on isospin)

My daddy has a lab in the Confederation
He told me “come around for your summer vacation”
Now I know lots of guys go there to study matter
I’m gonna find that sweet one
And teach him more
Much more than daddy knows

I’m gonna have some fun (in daddy’s lab)
pushing all the buttons (in daddy’s lab)
I’m gonna be a star (in daddy’s lab)
breaking all the hearts (in daddy’s lab)
I’m gonna go to play at hunting zed-zeros
mess around with the quarks
scatter protons all over
and hide with you behind the racks

Don’t wanna visit Rome, don’t wanna die in Venice
Don’t care for Wimbledon, and all the stars of tennis
I only like those guys who live to study matter
I’m gonna find my sweet one
And teach him more
Much more than daddy knows

I’m gonna have some fun…

LIQUID NITROGEN

You poured liquid nitrogen down my spine
as you told me you didn’t love me anymore
and run off with the girl next door
You poured liquid nitrogen in my heart
and you told me it wouldn’t hurt, what a liar
You promised you’d always be true

You said you’d be mine 12 months a year, 24 hours a day
You said I’d be yours each week my dear, until the end of time
But then you found her and you left me here
To cry and to run of tears
And now here I wait 12 months a year
But I’m hoping one day you’ll come back and stay

You poured…

You said you’d be mine forever and ever, 5040 minutes a week
Except Christmas Day ’cause you go see your mother
(That’s) 2800 less divided by 2
You said I’d be yours 30,240,000 seconds a year
Including leap years, which means 86,400 extra every four

You poured…

You said you’d be mine 3600 seconds an hour every day
Which in milliseconds that’s 43,200 times 10 to the 3rd
You said I’d be yours 24 hours a day,
integrating until the end of time.
Now in nanoseconds that’s just the square root
of 2670 billion times 10 to 90 divided by two

ANTIWORLD

He was sitting there, floating in the air
Alone on a cloud, sparkling all around
He went “pop” when he saw me
With those magnetic eyes
My heart stopped when I saw him
I just couldn’t breathe any more

He stood up and he walked on the air
And sparkling away headed up to me
With a smile on his face he said “come on hon”
Then we jumped in hyperspace
And inversed my polarity

Said I’m an anti-man
Live in an anti-world
I’ve got an anti-dog
Would you be, would you be my anti-girl

He took me back to his anti-car
And drove me home, I mean anti-home
Then he kissed me so sweetly all night long
And he took me completely
To a different world

Then he kissed me so sweetly all night long
And he took me completely
To a different world

He was an anti-man
Lived in an anti-world
He had an anti-dog
Would I be, would I be his anti-girl

I said yes, yes, yes, oh really yes!
Yeah yeah yeah, I mean anti-yes!
Now I walk ever so smoothly
Floating in the air
And I look ever so sparkly
Sitting alone on my cloud

Because I’m an anti-girl
Live in an anti-world
I’ve got an anti-cat
And I love, and I love my anti-man

Oh yes I’m an anti-girl
Live in an anti-world
I’ve got an anti-cat
And I love, and I love my anti-man

’Cause I’m an anti-girl
Live in an anti-world
I love my anti-man
yes I’m an anti-girl
I love my anti-man

And if there were any doubt as to whether this love story was a winner from the get-go, it’s worth noting that Michele Muller is now Michele de Genarro.

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